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Driving isn't hazardous to your health. Crashing is. That's like saying eating is unhealthy to your health because you might choke.


That’s like saying smoking is not hazardous to your health, getting cancer is.

Jumping off a building is not hazardous to your health, hitting the ground is.


Smoking is the intake of carcinogens, a direct health risk. Jumping off a building is the result of unhealthy depression, i.e. a symptomatic behavior.

A vehicular accident as a driver is not a direct cause of driving any more than a pedestrian accident by a vehicle is the direct cause of walking.


You seem confident that you can categorize any activity. what about: strolling along a pathway, hiking in the footlhills, scrambling a mountain, ice climbing, base jumping? At what level the rock climbing rating system do we inflect from indirect to direct risk?


Assuming arguendo that you're not talking about repetitive stress injuries to the body or brain from overdoing physical or stressful activity, and just the acute harm from accidents, they're pretty much the same as driving. The correlation to accidents does not mean the activity is dangerous: it's the accident that's dangerous.

I object to the conflation of quantitative risk of experiencing an incidental event with the qualitative risk posed by a voluntary event.


Driving is hazardous to other people's health in the form of crashes AND pollution in the form of noise, dust, and exhaust.


ah snap! I was wrong. Driving is not safe at idle as well! So I should rephrase: A running car is never safe.


and according to the WHO one particulate from that exhaust increases your risk from pollution above absolute zero, hence driving is not safe when it comes to your health.


What if you drive a Tesla?


Teslas still have a crash risk, emit noise and dust locally and emissions remotely.


Tire particulate is a particularly nasty form of pollution that most are unaware of. EVs aren't particularly better at reducing tread wear (some say it's a bit higher due to instant-torque at 0 RPM).


It is also beneficial because various crap gets delivered, people move fast to where they are needed and generally stuff gets done. Some paramedics even get so brazen as to fly helicopters to the rescue.

How do you draw the line?


It's not about drawing the line, it's about quantifying the impact.

I think this is what people don't get about the study. The study is not saying no one should drink. It's not saying that the risks of drinking outweigh the benefit. It's saying that for any amount of alcohol, ingesting it, on aggregate, decreases life expectancy. Nothing more. It's a measurement of the increase of risk, which can then be combined and contrasted with other measurements and help make informed decisions.

You draw the line however you want. You now have more information to make that decision.


I think overall it is likely slight net negative. Just from things like particulate pollution and siting not moving for a period. Also the UV light from sun possibly.

Not that there isn't acceptable tradeoffs with what is attained by driving.




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